This proposal is a request for funds to support the collaborative and research training efforts of the Consortium on Transitions, Families, and Mental Health in Diverse Populations. As the fourth generation of the highly successful Family Research Consortium. (FRC), FRC IV will draw upon the accomplishments of its predecessor, the Consortium on Diversity, Family Process, and Child/Adolescent Mental Health (FRC III). However, the proposed new consortium has a distinctive function, a reconstructed faculty, and a new set of activities. The research focus of FRC IV will be mental health and "transitions" which we conceive broadly as changes in individuals or families with regard to status, condition, location, or context. Transitions are viewed as periods of both risk and opportunity for mental health, adjustment, and human development. A key feature of the new consortium is to be especially attentive to ethnic, racial, cultural, socioeconomic, and structural diversity in our examinations of the focal issues. The Family Research Consortium was initially established in order to promote intellectual exchange and collaboration among scholars across the nation on issues related to families and mental health. The activities of the proposed consortium will focus specifically on the implications and consequences for family mental health of four types of transitions: 1) geographical, including immigration and migration, 2) life course, which includes biologically-rooted and stage-related change, 3) economic, including poverty and job change or loss, and 4) traumas, which include loss and unusually stressful events. The specific aims of the proposed consortium are: 1) to promote intellectual exchange and collaborative research and training in the study of transitions among diverse families, as they influence and are influenced by family processes and the mental health of family members, and 2) to advance substantive, theoretical and methodological knowledge on transitions among diverse families, as they influence and are influenced by family processes and the mental health of family members.